Z and P is easy race - break down with stats

General Discussion
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This is stats pulled from SC2 distribution. Don’t look at the % vs other races column because that’s unfair. Terran has the highest number of players. You have to compare how these ranks are distributed amongst each individual race which you can see in the second table.

Plat / Diamond has lowest % of Terran players amongst themselves cause it’s an extremely hard race to play where as P and Z has highest % of players in that base.
Subsequently Terran has high % in lower ranks such as bronze, gold and silver cause its harder to grasp and therefore rank up which is contrary to other races where they in fact do rank up

Zerg % vs other races Protoss % vs other races Terran % vs other races
Grandmaster 147 26.30% 210 37.57% 182 32.56%
Master 2576 27.45% 3074 32.76% 3158 33.65%
Diamond 16564 30.54% 15413 28.42% 16887 31.14%
Platinum 14575 29.88% 13915 28.53% 15366 31.51%
Gold 12904 25.05% 15373 29.85% 18723 36.35%
Silver 9377 20.56% 13502 29.60% 19344 42.41%
Bronze 2434 20.27% 3228 26.89% 5493 45.76%
Total 58577 64715 79153
Zerg % amongst own race Protoss % amongst own race Terran % amongst own race
Grandmaster 147 0.25% 210 0.32% 182 0.23%
Master 2576 4.40% 3074 4.75% 3158 3.99%
Diamond 16564 28.28% 15413 23.82% 16887 21.33%
Platinum 14575 24.88% 13915 21.50% 15366 19.41%
Gold 12904 22.03% 15373 23.75% 18723 23.65%
Silver 9377 16.01% 13502 20.86% 19344 24.44%
Bronze 2434 4.16% 3228 4.99% 5493 6.94%
Total 58577 64715 79153
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Moral of the story , Z and P are proven to be easy races. Stats literally do not lie. How the ranks are distributed per each individual race explains alot

Learning curve, mechanics everything else points to Terran being the harder race to grasp and move up in rank. Checkmate noobs

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Your analysis presumes your conclusion.

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Actually - my analysis is just that an analysis, you seem hurt by the truth

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The pain you correctly identify is that the damnest of lies is statistics.

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I don’t get it , please elaborate

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The stats are in-line with terran having the highest skill floor. This is understandable as the terran require higher APM to keep up with economy, and have unique weakness of having vulnerable workers when a building is under construction. And although terran has the strongest units, their performance are the worst if you do not attend the battles (just a-move) as they rely heavily on kiting, stutter steps and timely evacuation with medievac to trade efficiently.

Terran is the hardest race to learn while protoss is easiest, in context.

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Do not post the same thing in five places. It is super annoying and really stupid.

“Lies, damn lies, and statistics” is mostly a comedic-but-truthful comment on how you can force statistics to say what you want them to say.

The definition is better said on the wikipedia article than I can realistically come up with:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics

“Lies, damned lies, and statistics” is a phrase describing the persuasive power of statistics to bolster weak arguments, “one of the best, and best-known” critiques of applied statistics. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent’s point.

Basically, people want to trust when you offer numbers. But it’s also easy to take any number and massage it to say whatever you want it to say.

For a practical example, Simpson’s Paradox. To summarize it, in 1973, the whole pool of UC Berkeley applicants - if divided only by gender - said that men were more likely to be accepted than women.

But if you divided by the applied department, most of the departments had a higher application acceptance rate for women.

The gap here came about because a huge number of women applied for locations with limited seats - for example, no matter how many applicants the college gets, it can only accept, say, 500 applicants in each department.

If you can take 500 applicants whether you get 1000 or 10,000; then the huge number of applicants that are rejected washes away a lot of the other data when you look at the data at a different angle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

This is an explanation. It is even a plausible one - Hell, I’ll even agree that it’s probable that Terran’s mechanics make it more penalizing when you mess up significantly.

However, it is not a self-evident truth, and it is not a truth that is obviously inferred from the statistics.

Terran players can also be behind for the same reason that Fox is “bad” in Smash Brothers Melee: The probability that the opponent has experience in the matchup is high; and simply having that experience is hugely important for how well you can play it.

Additionally, Terran is the “comfort” race: It’s the one that functions most like what people would call a “standard” RTS race, it’s got a large number of familiar and intuitive functions, they’re also the Humans and there’s a lot of people that will gravitate to the Humans because They Are Human – In my limited world looks, there are almost as many people who will play the Not Humans for the same reason, though! But those “I won’t play Humans” are divided into two groups instead of merged.

Terran players can also be stuck because of the way that their macro can’t be done “hands off” without significant penalty – queuing units is Bad, but designing a playstyle that can macro a different way is easier for the other two races due to the one-click select larva of Zerg and the Warp Gate spammability of Protoss.

Or maybe it’s because Marines are super squishy and die to not much more than a stiff breeze, or the race has a “micro floor” that you don’t really get to below certain ranks.

Or maybe it’s because they see that Terran has Tanks and thinks they should be super defensive and miss part of the point being “attack”. Or maybe literally anything.

The statement –

“When you sort all players into rank-based buckets, while the other races are more flatly distributed, Terran players tend to be less likely to be in Diamond and Platinum leagues.”

is something we can draw from this data and that is reasonable. There’s just a lot of reasons why this could be true; and your data does not support your conclusion unless you assume your conclusion is true and that the reason for that being true is what is stated by this data.

Maybe it’s not harder to learn - Maybe the people that could get to that rank decide “I’m going to play a different race” because they’re just bored playing the Humans.

There are approximately infinitely many explanations; only one of which is your conclusion.

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Then play a different one? “Terran is the hardest race” It’s not a controversial statement anywhere but here on the forums.

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Terran is only the “hardest” in very high ladder or pro scene.
Protoss is a meme but in terms of basic apm demands zerg even more demanding than terran

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This seems to be grasping at straws. You have a lot of evidence, but nothing backing up your theory.
“Terrian has the highest % at lower ranks >>>> Terrian is bad” could work given the evidence.
“Terrian has the highest % at lower ranks >>>> Terrian has a higher skill floor” could also work.
The evidence points to a lot of things but not one thing entirely.

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This is proof . Unless blizzard gives the data for each match up win across the board this is all we have. Still guaranteed Terran is hardest

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The ball is in anyone’s court to refute this . PLease don’t talk nonsense without bringing something to the table. This is truth as we know it

Its the same as understanding the theory of gravity is real but not knowing how fast the ball falls.

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This is why its exactly the other way round.
Terran has the most straight forward mechanics you could hope for and since race selection is not random and is chosen individually players will pick the easy to grasp race. Which is terran. That principle is most likely true because we see it with zerg too - but reversed. Because its the hardest to grasp the low level players wont pick it :smiley:

Not exactly rocket science, isnt it? But this doesnt say anything about how easy/hard a race ultimately is. On high level i mean.

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Your logic makes 0 sense. If nobody “picks it” there would be no players in the upper ranks. Obviously people are picking it and they move up.

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At a lower rate - yes. Ofc people will pick p or z but at a lower rate. Most people that start with this game are playing terran. Makes sense because terrans are humans and is the tutorial race for campaign. The race plays out like any other rts race so its pretty familiar.

We see that the race population is not 33% for every race. There is a huge difference between t population and z population. And that difference has an explanation somewhere…

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Thats the whole point of this post buddy. Terran has the most players , and most of the Terran player base are stuck at lower ranks while every other race moves up. If you look at % of upward mobility its lacking compared to other races.

I’m not sure what you’re getting at . This is proof

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Nope. Its just the representation of what it is commonly known. Bad players choose terran. This is why terran has the most players in low leagues.

Your argument doesnt make sense. Why should the most popular race be the hardest race? makes sense that the most popular race is the race thats most familier and easier to grasp.

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Define “bad players”. You’re subjectively labeling whereas I am providing data that shows how things are distributed.

The most popular race is indeed the hardest race buddy as the data shows. Players are not able to climb out from the lower ranks in the same % as other races. Are you dense?

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This doesnt make any sense :smiley:

This is your interpretation. But its a flawed view because you dont know what would happen if those terrans switched races or what would happen if those z or p would play t

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